Melissa
Hathaway House, Book 13
Dale Mayer
Books in This Series:
Aaron, Book 1
Brock, Book 2
Cole, Book 3
Denton, Book 4
Elliot, Book 5
Finn, Book 6
Gregory, Book 7
Heath, Book 8
Iain, Book 9
Jaden, Book 10
Keith, Book 11
Lance, Book 12
Melissa, Book 13
Nash, Book 14
Table of Contents
Title Page
About This Book
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
About Nash
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Welcome to Hathaway House. Rehab Center. Safe Haven. Second chance at life and love.
Health-care worker Shane has been at Hathaway House since the beginning. He’s watched patient after patient scratch and claw their way to recovery and has watched relationship after relationship blossom into love and marriage. He believes in love. Wants a true love of his own. Yet he wonders now whether anyone is out there for him.
Until Melissa walks into his gym.
Broken and beaten by life and overwhelmed with endless pain was never part of Melissa’s long-term plan. But a year after an accident sidelined her navy career, she’s still fighting her way back to a normal life—if such a thing exists for the woman she’s become. Her transfer to Hathaway House is a lifeline to her oldest friend, but, even with Dani’s encouragement, Melissa’s journey back to health is long and hard and maybe just a pipe dream. But she’ll try again. One more time.
Separately, Shane and Melissa have been battling their own personal demons. When they meet at Hathaway House, the tough physiotherapist vows that his newest client will reach successes unimaginable to her. Together, working through her rehab plan, Shane and Melissa find a special tenderness behind each other’s strength.
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Prologue
At times in Melissa’s life, she’d made rash decisions. Most of them had turned out okay. Sometimes not. Then sometimes she deliberated for so long that the opportunities passed her by.
She stared at the crumpled letter in her lap. Not just crumpled but also tearstained. Her one and only friend had gone to the trouble to track her down, even after years of silence. Then Dani had known Melissa before her parents’ death. Afterward she’d moved into Dani’s place as a retreat. They’d finished school together. Then Melissa had entered the navy and what she had hoped would be a brand-new life.
And it had been, … until her accident.
Now she was at a crossroads yet again. And this time, once more, Dani offered a pathway open to Melissa. Back then Dani had pleaded with Melissa to continue staying with her and her father and to not go into service. She’d chosen the navy over her friend back then.
Now Melissa had a chance to choose Dani this time. She had spent the last many years building up a VA rehab center called Hathaway House—originally set up to help her father regain a life after his own injuries had sidelined his military career. With the upstairs part of this center growing quickly to assist human patients, Dani had quickly installed a veterinarian clinic down below. Then that was Dani; she couldn’t help herself from trying to save the world, one person, one animal at a time.
Just as Dani had tried to save Melissa back then, she was trying to save Melissa now.
She had refused back then, but now …
Looking around her four-person room, Melissa took in the apparatus attached to her bed, the wheelchair, and the crutches close by. The life she lived here, while recovering from her latest surgery, was filled with hopelessness at the thought of staying here. In reflection, going into the navy had felt like she was running away instead of running to a new future.
Now it felt the same again.
On impulse she picked up her phone and called Dani. When Melissa heard her friend’s voice, her throat closed.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Dani,” she finally got out.
Silence. Then Dani exploded, “Melissa?”
“Yeah,” she said, half in tears, half in laughter.
“Oh my, I’m so glad you called. I’ll be even happier if you have filled out that application to come here. Have you?’
“No, I haven’t. At least not yet.”
“Please do it,” Dani pleaded. “We can help you here.”
“I don’t know if you can,” she whispered back. “I’m in pain all the time. The journey itself will be incredibly hard.”
“Yes, it could be,” Dani said quietly. “But, once here, we have specialists on staff who can help you.”
Melissa sniffled back her tears. She wanted to believe her friend. She really did. But hope was a little thin on the ground.
“Please,” Dani said into the phone. “Take a leap of faith. Let me help. Last time I pleaded with you to stay. This time I’m asking you to come. You needed someone back then and walked away. You need someone now. Please don’t walk away from me this time.”
Melissa took a deep breath and capitulated. “All right. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do,” Dani said. “Come. You won’t regret it.”
Chapter 1
Melissa Deverol opened her eyes, hating the hot tears that still rolled down her face. Her gaze frantically searched the room around her to confirm what she already hoped. She was alone. Thank heaven.
The trip to Hathaway House had been brutal. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She was supposed to arrive here in good shape, just the next stop in her healing cycle. But, instead of that, the trip had become something more than just a transfer from one facility to the next. It had become a raging bridge that she struggled to cross.
Even before that was the struggle with her application. It had been denied, then accepted, then denied, then accepted, with the doctors causing the difficulties by determining she wasn’t ready for such a step forward. And thinking that she would never make it, she’d finally given up, and then it all came together.
But the transfer itself had been beyond painful. Her most recent surgery left her weak and with more muscle damage than she had even thought was possible, and here she was in agony as she lay on her bed, finally at Hathaway. It should have been a triumph; instead it was
